Worship in the 7th Era
by Mphaal
Summary: In the seventh era of Tamriel, computers may run on ego, whole cities may be ghost-machines, the Stormcloak bloodline might be elven, but one thing remains the same over the centuries: people are still messing with things they don't understand, for better or for worse.
1. Mephala

They were both dancing in the corps for the Red Eagle ballet, all in black feathers as a legion of Hagravens, when Anirye realized that she disliked Vardaline. It was after the performance of The Wolf Queen, the one where they both had their first solo roles, when she realized that she hated her. And it was when they announced the casting of Almsivi that she realized that she wanted to kill her. It's stupid. Completely petty, really. But Anirye still wants Vardaline dead.

She cried when they announced the casting. The director thought she was overcome with joy –after all, Almalexia is a part everyone envies- but really it was because they cast that ill-bred imp as Vivec. It's not right. It's not _fair._ Anirye trained for decades under the best tutelage in all of Alinor, danced for centuries in the greatest company in all of Tamriel. She dedicated herself so completely to the dance and nothing more that she was eight-six when she had her first kiss. She's never skipped practice, never skipped exercises, never even eaten anything in twenty years except specialty meals calibrated to give her optimal energy for the performance. Every evening, she undergoes a strenuous restoration regimen to keep her as youthful as she was at seventeen. She's seen every major performance in Daggerfall in the last fifty years. She's been in half of those major performances.

And yet she's still losing lead roles to a little Riften tartlet barely out of puberty.

Sedris proposes the method of execution. It's one of the dress rehearsals leading up to the performance and the cast has just received word that Lord Vivec himself will be in attendance at the premiere. This is unprecedented. Wonderful, but unprecedented. The ballet is still hotly debated in the performing arts community and there are many who regard it as blasphemous. This might change things completely. Little Vardaline is practically doing cartwheels as the makeup team applies gray paint to half of her body. Her head may be bald and alight with harmless magefire, her skin may be split, her eyes bright and Morrowind accent flawless as she goes through her few lines once more, but she doesn't resemble a living god so much as a little hairless scamp.

Sedris gleams in the elaborate Sotha Sil costume as she approaches Anirye's table. It's all synthetic dwarven: very flashy, very showy, but completely lightweight. What little she wears as the Mother of Mercy weighs twice as much in comparison. Sedris is brilliant, absolutely radiant when she smiles and more so when she dances. This role doesn't fit someone of her skill. Sotha Sil is important to the tale but such a drab, boring part to play.

"Hey you," she says as she throws an arm around Anirye's shoulders, giving a quick peck to the base of her neck. She's hiding something behind her back with her other hand, but she can't get a good look at it. The Altmer squirms and frees herself. "I've got a secret."

"You're messing my wig up, you witch," she says, but she laughs as she does so. She's serious by nature but rarely serious in speech. "What is it? We're on in a couple minutes. Your mask is on crooked, by the way. Just scoot it a little bit to the left. There you go."

"I have an answer to our Vardaline problem," she says and then dangles the book she's been hiding in front of Anirye's face before depositing it in her lap. She flips a page open, but the text is written in some strange script that she doesn't understand. She fixes her wig, looks at Sedris' reflection questioningly.

"Ashcroft lent me a book on the Anticipations to prepare for my role. I mean the obscure stuff, not just the stuff they teach in the temple. There's summoning instructions. And tonight is a summoning date. Do you get where I'm going with this?"

Anirye doesn't at first, but then it clicks. Daedric summoning? People still worship the Princes –who hasn't seen the flyers for the Church of Merid-Guiding-Light?- but the thought of summoning one seems savage, like something out of a distant story. But as she sits here dressed as a long-dead goddess that only one person in recent memory has ever seen, the thought seems fitting. Comforting, even.

She hands the book back, makes the last few adjustments to her wig and makeup. Summoning or not, they're due to begin rehearsal in a matter of minutes and she has to look perfect.

"Tonight then," she whispers. "Hide this. Don't tell anyone. My place?"

Sustained by secrets, Anirye dances perfectly this dress rehearsal. She soars through the air effortlessly and feels like she's obtained a taste of godhood in the dance. It's exhilarating, maddening even. And Sedris is brilliant. Bound at the end of her death scene, the Hopesfire prop to her breath, she reminds Anirye of a fallen swan. They live for moments of absurd beauty like this.

She doesn't wash the makeup off after the performance. She feels like Almalexia herself with it on, fierce and wonderful and free. The two of them stop by the florist on the way home to pick up the offering, then take a quick trip to pick up some candles, mirrors, and gauzy curtains to set the mood. Anirye's flat is pink and swarming in stuffed animals, so they need all the help they can get.

"I can't believe we're doing this," she giggles as she prepares the altar in the middle of the night. The focal point is a porcelain statuette of the many-armed goddess in the cutesy style that Sedris' grandmother always sends for Ascension Day. It seems vaguely blasphemous, but it's the only thing they had at hand, so hopefully the goddess doesn't mind.

"_I _can. Pass the lighter? I think these matches got wet."

She obliges and Sedris lights the ring of candles, singing a finger along the way. The air is thick with the scent of roses and wine and, though she doesn't know why she thinks so, magic. Anirye gathers up an armful of the nightshade they picked up earlier and scatters it around the little statue until it's barely visible among the carpet of flowers. The two share a look –are they really doing this?- before they join hands and begin the invocation.

"To Mephala, who threads the needle, we offer you the bane of life so that you might know the beauty of our sincerity. Yours is the hand that stitches, that rips the seams and puts it together anew. We offer our service as your hands and beseech you to answer our pleas, dear mother."

Nothing. Anirye's heart sinks. She doesn't know what they were even thinking. _Daedra? _The stuff of history and old stories. Then a laugh, quiet but amused. It's actually not a laugh. It does not meet the bare minimum requirements for a sound to be considered laughter. She has no idea why she thought that sound was a laugh at all. Nevertheless, it happened.

There's someone unspeakably beautiful lounging on her pink rose-print divan, a stalk of nightshade clasped in her long hands. Her eyes and lips are as red and inviting as a glass of wine, dark hair slicked back in the latest Alinor fashion, and Anirye catches herself staring for several seconds before she realizes that he isn't a woman at all. Is he? She? She catches the barest swelling of breasts, a hint of bulge between the legs, but perhaps it could just be the way Mephala's outfit is bunching up. She'd like to ask, but somehow she thinks it's rude to ask a deity of their sex.

"You have spoken the words –trite words, yes, but words nonetheless- and bade me to come, and so I answer. I am Mephala Webspinner. You speak of service to me, but that's not what you really seek at all, is it?"

She is speaking to a Daedric Prince. The reality of the situation hits her at once and she can't help but let out a nervous giggle at the thought of how disappointed her ancestors must be in her right now. Sedris jabs her sharply with one elbow _–they are speaking to a Daedric Prince- _and speaks next.

"Mother-Father, as one of your children, I come to you seeking blood-vengeance. There's this Altmer, Vardaline. Time and time again, she's taken what she doesn't deserve. It's not right. It's not _fair._ She's stolen parts from everyone, not just us. And now she's going to play in front of Lord Vivec and…well, why her? She's not even that good. But anything we might do to her, they'll surely find out. And we can't go to prison. We just can't. We need help."

This Mephala is hard to read. She can't tell if she's amused or disgusted.

"So you're jealous and come to me hoping for a killing solution? My, my, little one, if you know enough to summon me, you should know well enough that I favor the bold. But I am in an obliging mood and I _do_ so love the ballet. Very well, if you want murder, it shall be done."

"Really?" squeaks Anirye, delighted, before she corrects herself. "I mean, thank you! Thank you. But how?"

"I have been told that there is an absolutely delightful scene that involves certain gods that I am intimately acquainted with. It is…romantic in its passion, though not, perhaps, in its actions. You know of that which I speak of. Would it not be fitting if mere props were replaced with something more substantial, yes? There will be an investigation, of course, but it shall be ruled a tragic accident. How terrible, they will say, and it will never be traced back to you. But don't you think you should wait until the premiere? I daresay Vehk and Vehk will enjoy the display better and they will talk of it for centuries."

She knows what scene she's talking about: the wedding, if it can be called that, of Vivec. The spear-tips used look fearsome from a distance, but they're actually blunt and retract into the shaft on contact. It seems easy. If anyone's blamed, it'll surely be on the props team, and so what? They can just hire some more. This won't give her the Vivec role –Vardaline's little Maormer understudy will have to take on the mantle- but she just wants her out of the way. Out of sight, out of thought.

"Yeah, that would be gre- I mean, yes, thank you. And what do you want of us in return? We're sworn to your service."

"Be beautiful. Be daring. Put on a decent show for Vivec. Above all, amuse me. If you expected more, you either know me too well or not at all."

That's simple enough. After all, they are the best. Anirye glances over to Sedris, squeezes her hand to stop her nervous shaking, and in the second that it takes to do so, Mephala is gone, leaving behind only a purple flower to prove he was there. She stands up on creaky legs and sees the first light of dawn filtering in through the windows.

So that's that. They made a pact with a Daedric Prince to kill someone. She should be ashamed, but no, she feels like rushing down the street and screaming to the world, "I summoned Mephala! Me, me!"

Stupid, yes, but that's how she feels. But there's no time for any of that. The two of them have to catch some sleep before heading to today's practice.

Before she realizes it, the week flies by and it's finally time for the premier. Backstage, it's practically a wasp nest with the way so many people buzzing around: makeup artists, stagehands, FX mages, and, of course, the cast. You can't put on Almsivi without a veritable army of people behind the scenes. Anirye draws on her face paint with a fine brush dipped in an inky-black mixture, going through her steps in her head. She could have someone else paint it on for her, but she finds the repetitive movement helps with her concentration. In the mirror, she sees the reflection of Sedris strapping on her armor and a mage in the distance sticking a ball of magelight to Vardaline's shaven head.

All of the sudden, there's a commotion. The brush nearly slips in her surprise, but thankfully, she doesn't smear her face paint. She finishes it up and goes to investigate, but the crowd is so thick that she can't see a single thing. She pushes through, her pauldrons snagging on someone's headdress in the process and nearly coming undone, to see what it is. _Who _it is.

Lord Vivec himself is here to wish the performers the best tonight. Photographs do not do him justice. He's not handsome in any traditional sense, but he has the sort of face that ought to be carved in stone in for all in the temple to see. It is. It's when her eyes start smarting that she realizes that she's been staring at him and, blinking at last, averts her gaze. Her heart races. That makes two gods she's met in the past week. She could get drunk off his presence alone.

Vardaline knows no shame. She's looking up at him with those big, dumb cow eyes of hers and chattering away, none of it relevant, all of it completely inane. Worst of all, he seems faintly amused by it all. Or is he? Sometimes a laugh isn't a laugh, sometimes a smile isn't a smile. She hopes this is so now. She really, really does. She's going to be sick if this keeps up.

There's a touch at her cheek, ghost-soft. Here is Vivec, golden eyes gleaming with something indiscernible. Sadness? Mirth? She is reminded of Mephala, beautiful in ambiguity, and then has to stifle a gasp, because she realizes that he probably knows. She can call on a god but she can't hide from a god.

"How beautiful it is to walk this path. Dance well for the memory of Almalexia."

But that's all he says to her before murmuring scant praise to the next person. Does he or doesn't he? That's what rings through her head an hour later when the curtain rises and she takes her first birdlike steps before the audience of her greatest performance. Does he, doesn't he, does he, doesn't he, one, two, one, two, three. It becomes a rhythm to keep time. Rise on 'does,' fall on 'he.' She dances to the tune of indecision.

Later, she has a break before she goes on again, so she's backstage until she's due to come on again. The Pomegranate Banquet sequence is starting in a minute, maybe three at most, and the scamp corps in their yellow tulle are lining up to go on. Anirye scrounges up the first water bottle she can find and downs half in one go. She visited Elsweyr's endless expanse of desert once, but the heat from all the lights focused on her feels a thousandfold worse.

The drums begin beating. Doom drums. She doesn't know why she just thought that. Out of the corner of her eye, she sees Vardaline go onstage. It's going to happen soon now if it happens at all. She needs Sedris here, but she's on right now, doubling as a Daedric demiprince, so there's no one to share her secret fear and excitement with.

She squeezes her eyes shut, takes deep breaths to calm her nerves. Gods, this infernal beating is getting to her. It's like a heartbeat or a Heart beat: steady, steady, steady, and never ceasing. Nevertheless, she finds herself tapping out the rhythm on the arm of her chair as she strains to hear anything over the beating.

Drums, chanting, the shrill screech of violins, the sound of footfalls, on and on and on it goes. Suddenly, silence that seems to last a lifetime. Then applause. Anirye takes a deep breath to quell the tears that threaten to spill forth, then goes to ply Vardaline with false compliments as she, beaming in all senses of the word, comes twirling backstage.

After that, she is fueled by the wrath of a mer scorned. An ardor of bloodlust overtakes her as she cuts through the air like a throwing knife. She know the nature of the goddess now. Truly, she _is _Almalexia herself. She is no Mother of Mercy any longer. No, she is the Face-Snaked Queen, the one Boethiah anticipated. She never needed Mephala and her lies. After this is over, she'll strangle Vivec herself.

It is almost over. The Hortator is dead and alive again. Sotha Sil too is alive, but not for much longer. She, wearing her war-face, infiltrates the Clockwork City with a smile, bypasses all of his defenses and heads directly toward the ticking heart of it all. He welcomes her formally as if he knows why she's here, what she's come for, and has accepted it. A short, one-sided battle ensues. She binds him to the machines that sustain him and are him and, raising Hopesfire to the light, plunges it deep into his breast. The blood gushes forth and the doom drum beats on.

A pause. Then applause erupts from every corner of the theater, more than she's ever heard in her life. Confused, Anirye drops the prop Hopesfire. It clatters to the ground much louder than Dwemericine should, glows in a way that mere magefire should not. Bound and muffled by her mask, Sedris' death-gurgles go unheard by the audience. Breath stills in her throat. Anirye, eyes wild, takes a single step forward before she collapses and the crowds cheer on before they realize that something has gone horribly wrong.

In the balcony, Lord Vivec and Mephala watch on, faces unreadable.


	2. Sheogorath

Mr. Rath is the funny old man that wears purple suits and lives in the little red house next door with a yard full of flowers and a funny dog that runs circles around her when she chalks up the sidewalk. Issy Ashcroft is really good at chalking, except it always gets washed away when it rains and it rains all the time in Daggerfall. Right now, she's drawing rainbows, the ballerina lady on the news, and Mr. Guevenne, who's the happy man who owns the pub down the street and lives with Mr. Rath. Mina says they're _boooyfriends_, but that's silly. They're a hundred billion years old and you can't be boyfriends if you're a hundred billion years old.

Mr. Rath has eyes like the moon and Mr. Guevenne is a scary monster man with horns like a billy goat, but only she can see that. She told Mina about it once in the tree house, but then she told Ma and she got in trouble for telling stories and she doesn't know why because it wasn't a story, it was true, but she still got in trouble. She doesn't tell anyone anymore. That's okay, secrets are cool.

Mr. Rath isn't very good at being a monster man, because he's wearing a big sun hat that keeps flopping into his eyes and it makes her want to laugh, but she draws a smiley face instead. Issy doesn't like it when people laugh at _her, _so she's not going to laugh at anyone else_._ He's planting weird onion things into the flower beds, except sometimes he gets bored of that and digs up worms and grubs instead. They're gross but kind of cool, so she draws worms all over the smiley with purple chalk.

Wait, no, that's not right. You shouldn't have worms on your face unless you're dead and in a box. She tries to erase it with her sleeve, but the cement rips a little hole in her sweater, so she just draws a box for the dead face and scribbles all over it with green until she can't see the worms anymore. That's better. Next she adds some flowers in red, but she used up all the yellow drawing cats, so she chalks in the centers with pink instead.

"Daisy, daisy, nightshade, gingko and more."

She sings her flower drawing song. She's never actually sung it before and she doesn't know the rest of the words yet, but she knows that it's the right song to draw peonies to. But the rest of the words aren't coming yet. She knows that she knows them, even if she hasn't invented them yet, but they just won't come. She grinds the pink chalk against the ground in frustration until the wind kicks up a cloud of rosy chalk dust.

"Buy all the seeds at the general store!"

Issy stops her assault on the chalk, looks up to see Mr. Rath tipping his hat at her. Huh, so that's how the rest of the song goes. She waves at him with a rainbow-dusted hand, finishes up the last flower, and skitters off the sidewalk to the border of her clean-cut yard and his wild flower garden.

"Thanks! I like your onions. Are they going to grow to be red or yellow?"

There's a fat green caterpillar wiggling on an iris. She scoops him it and lets him crawl all over her hands. His feet are weird and he looks like he's probably really mushy, but it's kind of cool how he squirms. Mr. Rath grabs a handful of the onions and to her delight, he starts juggling them, one swirling through the air after another.

"These, lass, are no mere onions! No, no, they're better than onions. They're tulips! Tulip bulbs, sure, but tulips nonetheless. If you know how to throw them at the right king, you can wreck an entire economy with them. I have. I will."

Issy doesn't really know what that means, but tulips are nice and yellow, except when they're black and white striped or pink. Maybe he's growing purple ones to match his coat. The caterpillar likes tulips too, she thinks, because he starts climbing up her arm.

"Oh, okay! Can you teach me how to do that sometime if you're not busy?"

He laughs and she's not really sure why, but she laughs too. The caterpillar's on her shoulders and she plucks him off and scoots him back into her hands.

"Busy, busy, I'm always busy! Busy as a bee, being as a biz. There's plenty of time. First rule of juggling: if the ball goes up and doesn't come down, reality is broken again. It does that, loudly and often. It'll get better on its own, because _I, _for one, am not fixing it. Second rule of juggling: don't let the onions hit the ground. Just don't do it. The third rule is that there is…actually, is there a third rule? Does it even matter? Restrictions don't define an activity. You do whatever you like how you like and when you like, and if anyone ever tells you how to do it, bite their toes off one by one. _That'll _show them."

The bulbs come to rest on the palm of his hand, each stacking on top of the next until he has a miniature tower swaying precariously in the breeze. By chance, a grasshopper leaps onto the topmost one before alighting again, and the whole thing tumbles down to the ground. Mr. Rath grabs his trowel and out comes the dirt and in go the tulips. As he does so, he starts to make a little pile for everything he digs out of the flowerbed along the way: worms, grubs, an odd-looking coin, what looks like most of a fish skeleton, and something oddly-shaped and way too big to have ever fit in the little tulip-hole that he's pulling it out from. He knocks it against the paving stones to loosen the mud, dunks it in his ladybug-print watering can, and wipes it clean with a sleeve, putting it next to the pile of squirming worms.

It's a tiara and not one of those plastic ones that come with tea sets, but a real, actual tiara made of gold probably and all sorts of gemstones that she can't name. Issy, caterpillar companion in tow and eyes wide, inches as far as she can without trampling over the irises. Mr. Rath has the best garden _ever._ She doesn't say anything but she wants it. He knows it –even she knows that a hundred billion year old monster man knows all sorts of things like that- but doesn't say anything until the last tulip bulb is deposited and covered.

"Did you know you were a princess in a past life?" he asks, very serious for a change. She shakes her head no, because she can't even remember what she had for lunch, let alone any past lives. It seems like the right answer for him because he perks back up.

"Good, no one ever remembers that except, of course, when they do. Which is never. Oh yes, you were a princess indeed, little gnarl. Actually, you were a queen for most of it, which is even better. And a great one too, my absolute favorite! Your name was Wylandriah…no, no, it was Potema. I always get them confused. Do you want your crown back? I bet it does all sorts of tricky things."

Under most circumstances, Issy wouldn't believe a word of that, but when a moon-eyed monster man that grows dead fish and crowns in his garden tells you something, you better believe it.

"Okay, that'd be great," she says, and she's already trying to work out if this means she's still a queen and if she can boss Mina around. Mr. Rath tosses it over the flowers bordering the two yards, but it sails over her head and lands in the birdbath. She retrieves it, but then she hears her Ma calling her from inside and realizes that she can't take it inside just yet because no one would ever believe that Mr. Rath dug it out of the ground for her. They don't even believe that Mr. Rath has moon eyes. She rushes to the sandbox, the only place in the yard that she's certain no one else will ever bother with, and buries it under some sand, placing her toy dolphin on top to make sure she remembers where it is later. You can't be a queen if you don't have a crown.

Issy starts to head inside before she realizes that she forgot something absolutely vital. She dashes back, carefully tiptoes through the flowers –no mean feat, as most of his yard is either flowers or weird mushrooms- and deposits the caterpillar on the brim of his hat. Then she's gone, leaving behind Mad God and perfectly ordinary insect to garden in peace.

* * *

Afzal's exiting the music store with an actual 7E 1993 kynarethine record of Sugar Moon's _Neurasthenia _in hand when he sees the man across the street. Tall guy, positively outlandish outfit, probably a professor at the art school a few blocks over because that place breeds weirdos. He's not really dancing but sort of shuffling along to an invisible tune, feet never leaving the ground. If this was anywhere else, he'd think it's weird, but man, this is _Nvek_ we're talking about. Weird is in its blood, its soul. It's the sweet elixir that sustains it until even more weird shit can happen the next day and the next.

So he watches for a second and then heads down the street to scrounge up a newspaper from the box before heading down to the art supply store to check out the pens. His main thing is aural manipulation via tonal gun, but there's nothing like the feel of a beetle-ink micropen on corkbulb papyrus to get the creative juices flowing. Plus, he's promised one of his comrades-in-art that he'd design him an album cover and smooth, clean electrotablet lines do not do the Valeland revival jazz any justice. Afzal lingers over the rainbow displays of drawing supplies for several minutes before he gets the prickle-back sensation that someone's watching him. He's got a keen danger-sense and it never lies. He pretends to look at some notepads, but really, he's watching out for whatever it is.

Dancing Man's pressed up against the window tight, like he's looking for someone, but he's got the blankest eyes Afzal has ever seen. Sometimes you can just look at a person in the face and tell that whoever they used to be, they're not behind those eyes anymore. He goes back to poking around the notebooks for an inordinate length of time, but when he peeks up, Dancing Man's still there and fuck, he's staring right back at him with such a look of intensity that he goes ahead and almost dies right then and there. He is _not _here for any of this.

Afzal's shaking and gripping his bag so hard that his fingers nearly cut through the plastic as he, gaze firmly to his feet, creeps to the back of the store and locks himself in a stall in the men's room. It's a horrible hiding spot, but once he hears the click of the lock set into place, it feels like his heart restarts after being dead for several minutes. He tries to tell himself that it's probably just some old man that's looking for someone and everything's just a funny coincidence, but he can't convince himself of that any more than he can convince himself that he's actually a tiny Falmer pirate captain.

He doesn't know how long he stays there in that bathroom stall waiting for Dancing Man to get bored and just go away, but by the time he thinks the coast is clear and he tiptoes back to the open, Lady Azura's purple-gold skies are replaced by her sister's starry blackness. No sign of him by the windows and no sign of him in the store. He'd do a victory dance, but that just isn't his style. Instead, he goes right back to the pen display and picks out his drawing materials, because goddamn it, he is not going to let some weird old man stop him from picking up his supplies. He has a duty to the artistic community to keep on drawing in the face of vague danger.

He pays an unholy amount for the pens, but he barely even notices that at this point. He's just happy there's no one staring at him. Nvek. Great place to live, fantastic artistic community, but between the ghosts and the cultists and the rest of the strange lot, it's a magnet that draws in all manner of oddities. This is by no means the weirdest thing that's happened to him in his three years in the city and it will never, in fact, be.

The night air is cool and crisp, barely any ash on the breeze, and the streetlamps emit a steady, comforting glow. A woman strolls by with the specter of her grandmother; a living fabricant startles a group of teenagers on the corner; a fashion student is running around with an ultraviolet wig and headband studded with sparklers, because the fire-hazard look is in apparently. Yeah, things are back to normal. He gives a cursory glance for any rogue dancing men and heads out of the shop. It's late, but he's practically nocturnal in this point and half the stores down the strip never close until it's practically dawn. There's still things to see, things to buy.

He takes a quick trip to the comic book store to pick up some trade paperbacks for Pink and Falanea, then it's off to the vintage store across the street to rummage through overpriced t-shirts to his heart's content. An hour later, he's walking through the streets, still teeming with people, when he thinks he catches a glimpse of dancing and a face all too familiar out of the corner of his eye. And _close._ He spins around, ready to confront him or _something_, but no, it was just his imagination. He carries on, relieved, and it's then that he'd pulled into the alley.

Dancing Man's pinning his arms to the brick wall with more force than an old Breton ought to possess. Afzal knows he should yell, scream, kick him in the balls and then run far, far away, but the only thing he manages to do is whimper.

Dancing Man doesn't answer. Instead, he leans in so close that he can feel his breath on his skin and just bites his cheek. Just bites the shit out of him. He doesn't even know what to do. Are there any established guidelines for what to do in the event that a crazy old man stalks you all night and then goes cannibalistic on your face? Because if there are, he sure doesn't know them.

Afzal's so startled that he can barely feel the pain over his fear. He goes limp, but that does absolutely nothing to dissuade the man. At long last, he releases him and lets him fall to the ground. There's blood pouring from his mouth, staining his beard red, and it's _his. _He's going to be sick right here, right now.

"You, little mortal, have absolutely no idea of what you're playing with. Or who you're playing with," he says in some bizarre accent that he can't hope to identify, though he's going to spend ages later going through memospore records to try to place it. "You're running around like a headless chicken with no idea of what you're really messing with. Best figure it out before you bleed to death then, eh? Until next time, Architect."

There was a man there once, a mad man, but now there isn't. Afzal raises a hand to a bloodless, not-at-all torn cheek and wonders what in Oblivion just happened._ Nvek._ This city is going to be the death of him.

* * *

S'ravi checked in for a spider bite about three hours ago, but she's still sitting in an uncomfortable waiting room chair three hours later. These are designed for little wood elves, not Cathay-raht. She's busy struggling to find a sitting position that doesn't put her legs to sleep when the elf drags himself in. Not that she notices. People have been coming and going out of the hospital in droves tonight and she has long since passed the point where watching the new people still interests her. For S'ravi, there's nothing but a poorly-designed chair, a handful of outdated magazines, and the torturous wait until she can get checked out.

It's when he sits down right next to her that she finally takes notice of him. He _stinks, _absolutely reeks of unwashed skin, infection, something chemical and potent. Her snout wrinkles in distaste as she squirms as far away from him as she can get without leaving her seat. It's hard to get a good look at his face because he's hunched forward on his chair in a fetal position and his bedraggled ginger hair is in his face, but he looks to be an abnormally pale Altmer, perhaps with a bit of something else mixed in because his eyes look off in the quick glance she gets of his face before he buries his face in his legs.

"It was not better this time around," he mutters, inaudible to most but her keen Khajiit ears catch it. She doesn't know if he's speaking to her or to himself. "They told me it would be better, but I was deceived and bereaved."

"This one wishes to know if you are okay," she says tentatively, not quite sure if she's going to regret this later. She earnestly hopes that the mer's stench doesn't settle into her fur. He murmurs something that even she can't make out, though she makes out the words "heart and soul," and she urges him to speak up. He doesn't need to, because she already knows the answer and it's no. He's making tiny, choked sounds like a dog that's run into traffic, shivering as he does so. He lifts his face up just enough to see how blown his pupils are, something green leaking past his cracked lips. No, no, not okay at all.

How has he even made it this far into the hospital without immediately being rushed into care? There is no way that he wasn't seen by a horde of doctors and nurses coming in. She has no idea and right now, she doesn't care. She's just a clerk, but even she can tell when something is horribly wrong.

"Listen, S'ravi will be back. Stay strong, okay?"

"This was not what I was promised. He lied to me."

And that's all she hears of that, because S'ravi is out of the chair, out of the waiting room, down the hall, and trying to track down a nurse or doctor or _someone._ The hallways were brimming with people just a few minutes ago and now she can't find anyone at all. She flexes her claws, about ready to tear the tiles up in frustration.

"Can I help you?" says someone and praise the gods, it's a nurse.

"Yes, yes! Come with this one. I don't know what it is, but it's bad."

Seconds are hours until they get back to the waiting room. The Altmer's still there, thank goodness, and seems to be breathing, but anyone can tell he's in a bad way. A _very _bad way. S'ravi just came in for a spider bite, not to see someone maybe die right now. She takes a seat far away, facing the opposite direction, but when she hears the nurse gasp…well, has anyone met a Khajiit who can resist curiosity?

The mer's no longer curled around himself. He's standing up, albeit shaking so hard that it's a miracle that he's upright, and for the first time, S'ravi can see the blood blossoming from the gash where his heart is. _Should _be.

Suddenly, she does not mind the spider bite so much.


	3. Interlude

**Telvanni Institute for Higher Learning**

Nvek, Vvardenfell

* * *

"So, this is my first class with Dr. Fyr and I've heard some _things _about him."

"What, about grading? He's hard, but if you're in this class, that probably means you're too smart to fail."

"No, it's just…well, is it true that Dr. Fyr infected the entire senior class of 1900 with astral dysalgia?"

"Oh no, that's just a myth, but I know what you're going to ask next, and yes, he _did_ kidnap the head of the history department a decade later over a disagreement about the Dwemer. No one knows what happened, but after Fyr let him out of his tower, he decided to teach metamystics instead. To this day, Sera Rathri starts crying if you mention Heart theory to him."

"Dude, sorry to interrupt, but we're trading Divayth Fyr stories, yeah? I heard from his office assistant –you know him, right? Headphones guy in Ethics- anyway, I heard from him that he has the actual face of Nerevar Indoril in a jar in his study. The _actual _face."

"You think that's weird? That's nothing. I have it on good authority that he cloned Sotha Sil so he could screw him."

"Oh, come on, you expect us to believe that? Everyone knows that Dr. Fyr's only sexually attracted to himself."

"I don't know if you've noticed, man, but dude's got like six wives, so…"

"They're his _clones_. His sexy lady clones. Just look at them together sometime and you'll see it. Underneath that gruff old man exterior is a wizard that makes a damn fine woman."

"…You're kidding, right?"

"He _does_ have a sample of Sotha Sil's DNA, though. It's registered on C0DA but you can't even see a mention of it unless you have Oht-level access. I only know it exists because I have an aunt that works on the Maraboard and she told me."

"No, seriously, you're telling me that Dr. A. Fyr actually _is _a clone? I thought they were just one of those old couples that start to look alike over the decades. And dude's so old that he used to be a Chimer, so that's a lot of decades to look alike."

"Oh yeah, it's on the records and everything."

"I heard he wanted to see what would happen if he channeled the Eidolon Tower into a lich's locus point, but the Council wouldn't give him funding. It was in the Telvanni Courier a few semesters ago."

"I heard that the old Tribunal actually offered to make him a god, but he said no because otherwise he'd just have way too much swag for mortals to handle."

"I heard that the Dwemer disappeared because they realized they'd never have the intellect of Dr. Fyr."

"When Divayth Fyr talks, Vivec sits down to listen."

"He plays strip poker with Julianos, Xarxes, and Hermaeus Mora."

"His beard is actually his second brain. If he ever cut it off, he'd only be as smart as a Vehkian astralphysicist."

"What kind of heat must he be packing down there to get _six _wives?"

"_Seven_, actually. He married the concept of marriage itself."

"No, marriage married _him."_

"What does that even mean?"

"Maybe he's married to all of us but our simple minds aren't capable of realizing it yet."

"Seriously, is it a tentacle or something?"

"If you're quite done with that meaningless natter, apprentices, we're going to discuss divine diseases today," said Dr. Divayth Fyr, Wizard Premier of the Grand Council of the Scarab-and-Flower Alliance, as he strolled into the classroom. "But if you aren't, wouldn't it be fun to experience them firsthand?"

* * *

"…Dude, what the fuck just happened? What the actual fuck?"

"Pink, my man, just chill out. It's only a temporary setback."

"Why is everything glowing? What did you _do?"_

"Be calm, comrade. This is unprecedented, but I don't think you're hurt. Can you see out of it? Let me just grab my astral prod and see what-"

"No, but you're not getting near my face with that thing, mister! I'm gonna…wait, whoa, Afzal, that is _so weird_."

"Alright, well, I think all the lorkhanine in your bloodstream reacted to the magne-radiances when I adjusted the artifact's latent tone. So I'm pretty sure I turned your eyeball into a portal to Aetherius. That's, uh, that's never happened before. If it's any consolation, I bet you can explode vampires just by looking at them now."

"…"

"You okay?"

"Dude, it's just…I think you might be a certified mad scientist now. Architect-artist-scientist, whatever you're calling yourself now. You can fix this, right? _Right?"_

"I can totally fix it. I can probably make it even better. Just next time you join me in the lab, can you promise me one thing?"

"Eh?"

"Wear goggles next time. We're fresh out of Septims, so I _really_ don't want to turn your other eye into a gate to Oblivion on accident."


End file.
